Ivan Turgenev

Ivan Turgenev (1818 - 1883) was a Russian author who was born in Orel. He was educated at the University of Moscow, University of St. Petersburg, and the University of Berlin. Following his time in Berlin Ivan Turgenev returned to St. Petersburg in 1840. It was at this time that he began to protest against the mistreatment of serfs in Russia. Much of his later works exhibit his passion for this cause. While working as a government clerk he began to devote increasingly more time to writing, and in 1843 his first poem titled Parasha was published. Following his mother's death in 1850 he inherited the family fortune and released all of the serfs who had served his family.

In the following years Ivan Turgenev became more established in Russian literature, and much of his success can be attributed to the collection of short stories titled A Sportsman's Sketches. These were a series of stories about Russian peasant life during the period. Shortly after his early success as an author Ivan Turgenev began to travel and live abroad. Eventually he settled near Paris, France, where he later died in 1883.

Throughout his career Ivan Turgenev formed relationships with many prominent authors of the period including Leo Tolstoy, Gustave Flaubert, and Fyodor Dostoyevsky. However his relationship with Fyodor Dostoyevsky was often bitter. His most famous novel is Fathers and Sons which highlights the manners of men in the 1860's through the character Bazarov. Among the many other short stories, plays, and novels by Ivan Turgenev are:
A Rash Thing to Do - 1843
The Diary of a Superfluous Man - 1850
A Month in The Country - 1850
The Provincial Lady - 1851
A Conversation on the Highway - 1851
A Sportsman's Sketches - 1852
Rudin - 1857
Fortune's Fool - 1857
Asya - 1858
A House of Gentlefolk - 1859
First Love - 1860
On the Eve - 1860
Fathers and Sons - 1862
Smoke - 1867
King Lear of the Steppes - 1870
Torrents of Spring - 1872
Virgin Soil - 1877
A Lear of The Steppes - 1880
The Song of Triumphant Love - 1881
Clara Milich - 1882
An Evening in Sorrento - 1882
The Mysterious Tales - 1883


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William Butler Yeats

William Butler Yeats (1865-1939) was an Irish Poet and play writer who was born in Shandymount Ireland. He was educated in London, but studied art in Ireland. His father was the Irish painter John Butler Yeats who introduced William to painting. His interest in art was short lived, and following the publication of Mosada in 1886, he focused his attention to writing.

In 1887 William Butler Yeats took up residence in London, England and became friends with local poets such as William Morris, and Arthur Symons. Two years later he published his first collection of lyrical poems titled The Wanderings of Oisin.

Following his return to Ireland in 1896, William Butler Yeats met and formed a relationship with Maud Gonne who introduced him to the Irish nationalist movement. Three years later he helped create the Irish Literary Theatre, which was later renamed the Irish National Theatre Society. In 1904 William Butler Yeats began to write plays for the Abbey Theatre which was created by the Irish National Theatre Society. During this time he began to take the position of the most prominent figure in Irish literature. In 1917 he married Georgie Lees an Irish woman who claimed to posses supernatural powers. Following his marriage he received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1923, and served as a senator in the Irish Free State. It was his wife's claims of communication with the dead that inspired William Butler Yeats to write A Vision in 1925.

William Butler Yeats traveled to the United States numerous times during his life, and gave lectures at a number of institutions.

Over his career William Butler Yeats changed the tone of his writing at various stages. His early poems such as The Wind Among the Reeds, The Countess Kathleen, and The Land of Heart's Desire are rich in style, cheerful and highly detailed. His later poems and plays took on a more serious, mystical and restrained tone as seen in The Hour Glass, The Shadowy Waters, and The Green Helmet. His final poems and plays are again mystical, but less restrained as seen in The Tower, The Player Queen, and The Winding Stair. The final poems and plays of William Butler Yeats are generally considered his best work. Among the notable plays, poems, and essays of William Butler Yeats are:
Mosada - 1886
The Wanderings of Oisin - 1889
The Countess Kathleen - 1892
The Celtic Twilight - 1893
The Land of Heart's Desire - 1894
Collected Poems - 1895
The Secret Rose - 1897
The Wind Among the Reeds - 1899
Shadowy Waters - 1900
Cathleen Ni Houlihan - 1902
Ideas of Good and Evil - 1903
The Hour Glass - 1903
Deidre - 1907
The Green Helmet - 1910
The Cutting of an Agate - 1912
Responsibilities - 1914
Reveries over Childhood and Youth - 1915
The Wild Swans at Coole - 1917
The Player Queen - 1919
The Second Coming - 1920
Plays for Dancers - 1921
Later Poems - 1922
The Trembling of the Veil - 1922
Plays and Controversies - 1923
The Cat and the Moon, and Certain Poems - 1924
A Vision - 1925
Estrangement - 1926
October Blast - 1927
The Tower - 1928
The Winding Stair - 1929
The Words Upon the Window Pane - 1934
The King of the Great Clock Tower - 1934
A Full Moon in March - 1935
Dramatis Personae - 1935
Purgatory - 1938
New Poems - 1938


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William Makepeace Thackeray

William Makepeace Thackeray (1811-1863) was an English author who was born in Calcutta India. His father Richmond Thackeray was secretary of the East India Trading Company who passed away when William was only 4 years old. At the age of 18 William Makepeace Thackeray attended the Cambridge Trinity College, and left after only 2 years.
Following his time at Trinity College, William Makepeace Thackeray traveled for a brief time. During his travels he was introduced to German author Johann Wolfgang von Goethe in Weimar. Following his travels in Europe he returned to England and studied Law for a short time.
In the years that followed, William Makepeace Thackeray attempted a career as an artist before finally entering journalism. Following two failed attempts at funding his own newspapers, he worked for Fraser's Magazine and other publications. In 1836 he married Isabella Gethin Shawe who after having three children with William Makepeace Thackeray became mentally ill and eventually commited.

As a writer William Makepeace Thackeray contributed many satirical articles to various newspapers, however he is best known for his masterpiece Vanity Fair. In Vanity Fair he was able to capture a true sense of upper English society during the period. Due to the importance of this novel William Makepeace Thackeray is considered one of the greatest authors in English Literature. While Vanity Fair is his most important work, his first success in literature was the publication of The Yellowplush Papers in Fraser's magazine. In the years following The Yellowplush Papers, he published numerous other novels through Fraser's including the novels Catherine, and The Luck of Barry Lyndon. Among the novels by William Makepeace Thackeray are:

The Yellowplush Papers - 1837
A Shabby Genteel Story - 1840
Catherine - 1840
The Irish Sketchbook - 1843
The Luck of Barry Lyndon - 1844
Stray Papers - 1821 to 1847
Vanity Fair - 1848
The Book of Snobs - 1848
Rebecca and Rowena - 1850
Pendennis – 1850
The Paris Sketchbook - 1852
The History of Henry Esmond - 1852
Men's Wives - 1852
The Rose and the Ring - 1855
The Newcomes - 1855
The Virginians - 1859
The Adventures of Philip - 1862
Denis Duval - 1864


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Henry David Thoreau

Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862) was an American author who was born in Concord Massachusetts. He attended Harvard University, and upon graduation became a teacher and tutor. In 1841 he moved into the home of famous American writer Ralph Waldo Emerson. Over the following two years he became acquainted with other prominent figures of American Literature during that time. It was after his first stay at the home of Ralph Waldo Emerson, that Henry David Thoreau moved into a rough cabin on the shore of Walden Pond, which is located near his home town of Concord. Over the four years that he lived at Walden Pond, he earned money through small local handyman jobs. His spare time was consumed with the study of nature, and the woods around Walden Pond.

Following the four years in the woods on Walden Pond, Henry David Thoreau again lived with Ralph Waldo Emerson for a brief time until finally moving in with his sister and parents in 1849. It was at this time that Henry David Thoreau wrote A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers which is one of his masterpiece novels. The story is a memoir of a trip he took on the Concord River and Merrimack River in 1839. Using his unique way of nature and wilderness observation, he was able to express his personality through these observations in A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers. In his next masterpiece Walden, or Life in The Woods, he reflects on his time and studies at Walden Pond.

As with Walden and A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers, all books by Henry David Thoreau are written in letter form. All of his other published works were taken from his journals and letters following his death. A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers, and Walden were the only books by Henry David Thoreau that were published prior to his death. Among the various published letters and journals by Henry David Thoreau are:

Aulus Persius Flaccus - 1840
The Service - 1840
A Walk to Wachusett - 1842
Paradise Regained - 1843
The Landlord - 1846
Herald of Freedom - 1844
Sir Walter Raleigh - 1844
Wendell Phillips Before the Concord Lyceum - 1845
Thomas Carlyle and His Works - 1847
Reform and the Reformers - 1848
Resistance to Civil Government, or Civil Disobedience - 1849
A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers - 1849
An Excursion to Canada - 1853
Walden - 1854
Slavery in Massachusetts - 1854
Remarks After the Hanging of John Brown - 1859
A Plea for Captain John Brown - 1859
The Last Days of John Brown - 1860
Walking - 1861
Wild Apples: The History of the Apple Tree - 1862
Autumnal Tints - 1862
Night and Moonlight - 1863
Life Without Principle - 1863
Excursions - 1863
The Maine Woods - 1864
The Highland Light - 1864
Letters to Various Persons - 1865
Cape Cod - 1865
A Yankee in Canada, with Anti-Slavery and Reform Papers - 1866
Early Spring in Massachusetts - 1881
Summer - 1884
Winter - 1888
Autumn - 1892
Misellanies - 1894
Familiar Letters of Henry David Thoreau - 1894
Poems of Nature - 1895
Some Unpublished Letters of Henry D. and Sophia E. Thoreau - 1898
The First and Last Journeys of Henry David Thoreau - 1905
Journal of Henry David Thoreau - 1906


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Jules Verne

Jules Verne (1828-1905), was a French author who was born in Nantes. He was educated at Saint Donatien College where he may have been a student of Brutus de Villeroi (inventor and pioneer of the first submarines). While history supports no formal records of Jules Verne studing under Brutus de Villeroi, it is widely believed that Villeroi may have inspired the novel Twenty Thousand Leagues Under The Sea by Jules Verne. Following his years at Saint Donatien College, he studied law in Paris. After failing to complete his law degree, he focused on writing, and worked as a stockbroker. Along with Twenty Thousand Leagues Under The Sea, Jules Verne wrote many other science fiction novels including the famous A Journey to the Center of the Earth, Around the World in Eighty Days, and From the Earth to the Moon. It was his imagination, and ability to foresee the advancement of science and technology that enabled him to usher science fiction into a new era. Jules Verne not only predicted many future scientific inventions, but he strongly influenced the writing of many future science fiction writers including H. G. Wells, and Rider Haggard. Over the course of his writing career Jules Verne wrote many novels and short stories with varied levels of success. His later writing began to take on a depressed feeling as seen in The Lighthouse at the End of the World, and Invasion of the Sea. Among the many novels and short stories by Jule Verne are:

A Drama in the Air - 1851
A Drama in Mexico - 1851
Martin Paz - 1852
Master Zacharius - 1854
A Winter Amid the Ice - 1855
Backwards to Britain - 1859
Five Weeks in a Balloon - 1863 (first published novel)
Paris in the Twentieth Century - 1863
The Count of Chanteleine - 1864
Journey to the Center of the Earth - 1864
The Blockade Runners - 1865
From the Earth to the Moon - 1865
The Adventures of Captain Hatteras - 1866
In Search of the Castaways - 1968
Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea - 1870
Around the Moon - 1870
A Floating City - 1871
Dr. Ox's Experiment - 1872
The Adventures of Three Englishmen and Three Russians in South Africa - 1872
Around the World in Eighty Days - 1873
The Fur Country - 1873
Doctor Ox - 1874
The Mysterious Island - 1875
An Ideal City - 1875
The Survivors of the Chancellor - 1875
Michael Strogoff - 1876
Off on a Comet - 1877
The Child of the Cavern - 1877
Dick Sand, A Captain at Fifteen - 1878
The Begum's Millions - 1879
The Mutineers of the Bounty - 1879
Tribulations of a Chinaman in China - 1879
The Steam House - 1880
Ten Hours Hunting - 1881
Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon - 1881
Godfrey Morgan - 1883
The Green Ray - 1883
Kéraban the Inflexible - 1884
Frritt Flacc - 1884
The Vanished Diamond - 1885
The Waif of the Cynthia - 1885
The Archipelago on Fire - 1885
Mathias Sandorf - 1885
The Lottery Ticket - 1886
Robur the Conqueror - 1887
Gil Braltar - 1887
North Against South - 1887
The Flight to France - 1888
Two Years' Vacation - 1889
Family Without a Name - 1889
The Purchase of the North Pole - 1889
César Cascabel - 1890
Mistress Branican - 1891
In the Year 2889 - 1891
Adventures of the Rat Family - 1891
Carpathian Castle - 1892
Claudius Bombarnac - 1892
Foundling Mick - 1893
Mr. Ray Sharp and Miss Me Flat - 1893
Captain Antifer - 1894
Propeller Island - 1895
Facing the Flag - 1896
Clovis Dardentor - 1896
An Antarctic Mystery - 1897
The Mighty Orinoco - 1898
The Will of an Eccentric - 1899
The Castaways of the Flag - 1900
The Village in the Treetops - 1901
The Sea Serpent - 1901
The Kip Brothers - 1902
Traveling Scholarships - 1903
A Drama in Livonia - 1904
Master of the World - 1904
Invasion of the Sea - 1905
The Lighthouse at the End of the World - 1905
The Golden Volcano: The Claim on Forty Mile Creek and Flood and Flame - 1905
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